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This is a purely functional photograph revealing the condition of the solar panels outside the window on the International Space Station, and you need to stop thinking it’s pretty right now. This photograph was taken on April 3, 2013 as part of an external survey of the International Space Station conducted entirely by peering out…
When you walk into the Lowline Lab, the first thing you taste is oxygen. The Lab is hidden in an old warehouse, two blocks away from where the Lowline, a proposed underground park, is slated to open in 2020. The Lab is its prototype–part testing ground and part public sneak peek at the paradise that…
Two masters of film get mashed up in what has to be the trippiest way possible. Jimmy Stewart wanders a world that combines elements from both Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick movies in this really well edited clip. We see Stewart run into Jack Nicholson’s character from The Shining and walk through 2001 and more.…
The Ebola virus only spreads through direct contact with a sick person’s body fluids. including blood, saliva, sweat, vomit, urine, feces, breast milk, and semen. It’s the last one that has doctors concerned: it’s likely that for one Liberian woman, Ebola was a sexually-transmitted disease. The woman came down with the virus after she had…
When Marty McFly finally arrives in modern-day Hill Valley, California a little later this afternoon, I admit I’ll be a little sad. Because his arrival signifies the end of one of the best internet memes of all time. If you were anywhere near a computer over the last decade, at some point in your electronic…
Oh, look. You knew I was gonna use that one. But seriously, it’s not every day we get cool merchandise featuring Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor—and this new figure looks pretty damn good. The latest in Big Chief Studio’s line of all things Doctor Who—which has included Peter Capaldi’s incumbent Doctor, a gorgeous TARDIS, and the…
Yum. If I were a giant shredder, I can’t imagine many things more fun to crush and destroy and eat than bulletproof glass. The way it completely shatters into glass dust, the fight it gives because it’s so strong, it’s all so damn satisfying. Watch the destruction below, as the shredder takes down all the…
Here’s a crazy one. In the progression of gadgets to crawl from the primordial pool, Microsoft’s ambitious Surface Book feels like a punctuation mark. It’s a turn from the expected, and for me at least, it’s a computer so enticing, and habit changing, that I’m thinking—Hey, what about Windows? What Is It? Microsoft’s first ever…
It’s not often you see the United States Geological Survey and Jet Propulsion Laboratories get into a smackdown over science, but that’s just what happened thanks to a new set of earthquake predictions for southern California. Researchers led by Andrea Donnellan at Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) published a paper in a reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journal…
Self-encrypting hard drives are a bright idea, allowing you to back up data safe in the knowledge that nobody else can sift through it. Unless, that is, the encryption system is easy to crack — which a new security study had found can be the case. Motherboard reports that a study sent to the Full…
The Garmin Forerunner family has long been a pretty great way to bring some science to your running. For the latest versions, what’s mostly not broke ain’t being fixed, but there are some neat-looking new features. First up are the new Forerunner 230 and 235, the lower-end watches. The difference between the two is that…
23andMe quickly gained notoriety by providing private customers with health and ancestry information directly from their sequenced DNA, then, in 2013, it was stopped from providing health details by the FDA. Now it’s got the green light to resume. The New York Times reports that, two years later, the company has gained FDA approval to…
Yesterday, Facebook launched a new initiative called TechPrep. Aimed particularly at women and minorities, it’s designed to help youngsters find a trajectory into the world of tech—with the help of their parents. The site’s not one of those that are designed to teach kids to code; instead, it’s there to inspire them and their parents…
A team of engineers from Stanford University decided to create a self-driving DeLorean. But unlike the autonomous cars that are designed to sedately drive in city traffic, this one’s made to drift and pull donuts. The car — known as the Multiple Actuator Research Test bed for Yaw control, or MARTY — is an experiment…
Ever since iOS 8, Apple has been reminding law enforcement that it can’t pull data off locked iPhones. In a subtly sassy brief filed for a federal judge, Apple has reminded everyone that it can’t (and won’t) break users’ encryption if the government asks it to. The brief was filed at the invitation of U.S.…
Misift’s Shine fitness tracker focused on being good at one thing when it was introduced into the wearable wild in 2012, um, tracking fitness. But since then, wearables have evolved beyond counting steps and seeing how well you’re snoozing. Now, notifications are a must for many fitness trackers. That’s why the Shine 2 exists. From…
What can you get for $1800 in rent? In Brooklyn, you can get a fully furnished apartment, a bedroom that’s all yours, plus access to two bathrooms, a living room, and a well-appointed, brand-new kitchen. Oh yeah, and here’s the twist: You’ll share it with four other people—who you don’t get to choose. While that…
How soon will you be able to see over the phone? It may be sooner than you think. For the remarkable new Hughes Tonotron […] will make possible “face-to-face” telephone calls to and from your office or home. — Print ad in the March 1957 issue of Scientific American
Christian Friedrich Schönbein was a very good chemist who lived to the ripe old age of 70. In doing so, he defied the odds; he had a knack for putting himself in harm’s way for the sake of science. Schönbein was born in 1799 and got his education the old-fashioned way—through rampant abuse of child…
The San Francisco housing market is notoriously insane right now. However, maybe don’t try to get around it by squatting in a conveniently vacant $12.5 million mansion abandoned by a bankrupt tech bro, and helping yourself to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of artwork left hanging on its walls. That strategy didn’t work for…
